The Enclosures in England Part 3

1208-1209 6838 4-1/3 2-1/3 1299-1300 3353 9[54] 4 1396-1397 2366-1/2 6 3

TABLE IV

ACERAGE PLANTED WITH GRAINS ON THE MANOR OF THE BISHOPRIC OF WINCHESTER[55]

_Wheat_ _Mancorn and Rye_ _Barley_ 1208-1209 5108 492 1500 1299-1300 2410 175 800

TABLE V

YIELD OF WHEAT AT WITNEY[56]

_Date_ _Bushels per acre_ _Acres sown_ 1209 3-2/3 417 1277 8-1/2 180 1278 ... 191 1283 8-1/2 ...

1284 10-1/2 ...

1285 7-1/4 ...

1300 (7-10) ...

1340 5-1/2 126 1341 7-1/2 138 1342 6 132 1344 ... 129 1346 5-1/2 127 1347 6-1/2 128 1348 6-3/4 138 1349 4-3/4 128 1350 5-1/4 ...

1351 6-1/2 ...

1352 8-1/2 ...

1353 5 ...

1397 6-1/4 51-1/2

The yield of the soil in single seasons at widely separated intervals is a piece of information of little value for our purpose. These tables reveal other facts of greater significance. The yield for the year gives almost no information about the normal yield over a series of years, but the area planted depends very largely upon that yield.

The farmer knows that it will pay, on the average, to sow a certain number of acres, and the area under cultivation is not subject to violent fluctuations, as is the crop reaped. The area sown in any season is representative of the period; the crop reaped may or may not be representative. Land which, over a series of years, fails to produce enough to pay for cultivation is no longer planted. If the fertility of the soil is declining, this is shown by the gradual withdrawal from cultivation of the less productive land, as it is realized that it produces so little that it no longer pays to till it.

Table IV shows that in fact this withdrawal of worn out land from cultivation was actually taking place. The area sown with wheat on the twenty-five manors for which the statistics for both periods are available was reduced by more than fifty per cent between the beginning and the end of the thirteenth century. A similar reduction in the area planted with all of the other crops, mancorn, rye, barley and oats, took place. A process of selection was going on which eliminated the less fertile land from cultivation. If six bushels an acre was necessary to pay the costs of tillage, land which returned less than six bushels could not be kept under the plow. The six bushel crop which seems to be normal in the fourteenth century is not the average yield of all of that land which had been under cultivation at an earlier time, but only of the better grades of land. Plots which had formerly yielded their five or six bushels an acre had become too barren to produce the bare minimum which made tillage profitable, and their produce no longer appeared in the average. Even with the elimination of the worst grades of land the average yield fell, because the better land, too, was becoming less fertile. At Witney (Table V) the area planted with wheat fell from about 180 acres in 1277 to less than 140 acres in 1340; but, in spite of this reduction in the amount of land cultivated, the average annual yield after 1340 was less than 6-1/2 bushels, while it had been about 8-1/2 bushels per acre in the period 1277-1285. This withdrawal of land from cultivation took place without the occurrence of any such calamity as the Black Death, which is ordinarily mentioned as the cause of the reduction of arable land to pasture in so far as this took place before 1400. It affords an indirect proof of the fact that much land was becoming barren.

These statistical indications of declining productivity of the soil are supported by the overwhelming evidence of the poverty of the fourteenth century peasantry--poverty which can be explained only by the barrenness of their land. Many of the features of the agrarian changes of this period are familiar--the subst.i.tution of money payments for villain services, the frequency of desertion, the amalgamation and leasing of bond-holdings, the subdividing and leasing of the demesne. A point which has not been dwelt upon is the favorable pecuniary terms upon which the villains commuted their services. Where customary relations were replaced by a new bargain, the bargain was always in favor of the tenant. What was the source of this strategic advantage of the villain? The great number of holdings made vacant by the Black Death and the scarcity of eligible holders placed the landowner at a disadvantage, but this situation was temporary. How can the difficulty of filling vacant tenements before the Black Death be accounted for, and why were villains still able to secure reductions in their rents a generation after its effects had ceased to be felt?

Even before the Black Death, it was frequently the case that villain holdings could be filled only by compulsion. The difficulty in finding tenants did not originate in the decrease in the population caused by the pestilence. There is little evidence that there was a lack of men qualified to hold land even after the Black Death, but it is certain that they sought in every way possible to avoid land-holding. The villains who were eligible in many cases fled, so that it became exceedingly difficult to fill a tenement when once it became vacant.

Land whose holders died of the pestilence was still without tenants twenty-five and thirty years later, although persistent attempts had been made to force men to take it up. When compulsion succeeded only in driving men away from the manor, numerous concessions were made in the attempt to make land-holding more attractive. It is important to notice that these concessions were economic, not social. The force which was driving men away was not the desire to escape the incidents of serfdom, but the impossibility of making a living from holdings burdened with heavy rents. These burdens were eased, grudgingly, little by little, by landlords who had exhausted other methods of keeping their land from being deserted. It was necessary to reduce the rent in some way in order to permit the villains to live. The produce of a customary holding was no longer sufficient to maintain life and to allow the holder to render the services and pay the rent which had been fixed in an earlier century when the soil was more fertile.

Notices of vacated holdings date from before 1220 on the estates of the Berkeleys. Thomas the First was lord of Berkeley between 1220 and 1243, and

Such were the tymes for the most part whilest this Lord Thomas sate Lord, That many of his Tenants in divers of his manors ...

surrendred up and least their lands into his hands because they were not able to pay the rent and doe the services, which also often happened in the tyme of his elder brother the Lord Robert.[57]

This entry in the chronicle is significant, for it is typical of conditions on many other manors at a later date. The tenants were not able to pay the rent and do the services, and therefore gave up the land. It was leased, when men could be found to take it at all, at a rent lower than that which its former holders had found so oppressive.

It is interesting to note that much of this land was soon after enclosed and converted to pasture, more than a century before the event which is supposed to mark the beginning of the enclosure movement. The productivity of the land had declined; its holders were no longer able to pay the customary rent, and the lord had to content himself with lower rents; the productivity was so low in some cases that the land was fit only for sheep pasture.

Land holding was regarded as a misfortune in the fourteenth century.

The decline in fertility had made it impossible for a villain to support himself and his family and perform the accustomed services and pay the rent for his land. Sometimes heirs were excused on account of their poverty. Page has made note of the prevailing custom of fining these heirs for the privilege of refusing the land:

In 1340 J. F., who held a messuage and half a virgate, had to pay two s.h.i.+llings for permission to give up the land, because he was unable to render the services due from it. Three other men at the same time paid six pence each not to be compelled to take up customary land ... at Woolston, 1340, R. G. gave up his messuage and half virgate because he could not render the necessary services; whereupon T. S. had to pay three s.h.i.+llings three pence that he might not be forced to take the holding, and another villain paid six s.h.i.+llings eight pence for the same thing.[58]

Miss Levett mentions the fact that cases were fairly frequent at the Winchester manors in the fourteenth century where a widow or next of kin refused to take up land on account of poverty or impotence;[59]

and three villains of Forncett gave up their holdings before 1350 on account of their poverty.[60]

In case no one could be found who would willingly take up the land, the method of compulsion was tried. The responsibility for providing a tenant in these cases seems to have been s.h.i.+fted to the whole community. A villain chosen by the whole homage had to take up the land. At Crawley in 1315 there were two such cases. A fine was paid by one villain for a cottage and ten acres "_que devenerunt in ma.n.u.s domini tanquam escheata pro defectu tenentium & ad que eligebatur per totam decenuam_." At Twyford in 13433-1344, J. paid a fine for a messuage and a half virgate of land, "_ad que idem Johannes electus est per totum homagium_."[61] In other entries cited by Page, the element of compulsion is unmistakable: the new holder of land is described as "_electus per totum homagium ad hoc compulsus_," a phrase which is frequently found also in the entries of fines paid on some of the Winchester manors after the Black Death.[62]

This method of compulsion was useful to some extent, but there were limits beyond which it could not be pushed. Five men of Therfield in 1351 were ordered to take up customary land, and several of them left the manor rather than obey. "_Vendiderunt quod habuerunt et recesserunt nocitante._"[63] At Nailesbourne, in the same year, "_Robertus le s.e.m.e.nour compulsus finivit et clam recessit et ea tenere recusavit_."[64] The problem which confronted landowners during the Black Death was not so much an absolute lack of men on the manors, as a stubborn unwillingness on the part of these men to hold land. There were enough men left by the pestilence, but they were determined to avoid taking up the tenements whose holders had died. The pressure which was brought upon the villains to induce them to take up land and to prevent them from leaving the manor could not prevent the desertions, which had begun before the pestilence, and which took away the men who would naturally have supplied the places of those who died. The whole village must have been anxious to prevent the desertion of these men, for the community was held responsible for the services from vacant tenements, when they failed to provide a tenant.

At Meon, for instance, each of twenty-six tenants paid 1 _d._ in place of works due from a vacant holding, according to an arrangement which had been made before the Black Death,[65] and at Burwell, in 1350, when three villains left the manor, their land was "_tradita toto homagio ad faciendum servicia et consuetudines_."[66] In spite of the deterring force which must have been exerted by public opinion under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive measures taken by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture those who had fled, the records are full of the names of those who had been successful in making their escape. Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual leakage from the Winchester manors. "Villeins were apt 'to go away secretly' and to be no more found."[67] Page describes a similar tendency on the part of villains of the manors whose records he has examined. At Weston, three villains deserted in 1354. At Woolston in 1357 a serf "_recessit a dominio et dereliquit terram suam_." At Chilton, between 1356 and 1359, eleven men and two women fled, some of whom were recaptured. At Therfield in 1369 a man who held twenty-three acres of land fled with his whole family. In the same year at Abbot's Ripton a man escaped with his horses, and three years later another villain left Weston by night.[68] At Forncett, "Before 1378 from 60 to 70 tenements had fallen into the lord's hands. It was the serfs especially who were relinquis.h.i.+ng their land; for a larger proportion of the tenements charged with week-work were abandoned than of the more lightly burdened tenements."[69] This, of course, is what we should expect, as the lighter burdens of these holdings caused their tenants to feel less severely than the ordinary serfs the declining productivity of the land.

The method of compulsion failed to keep the tenants on the land. They ran off, and the holdings remained vacant. It was necessary to make concessions of a material nature in order to persuade men to take up land or to keep what they had. They were excused of a part of their services in some cases, and in others all of the services were definitely commuted for small sums of money. When no tenants for vacant land could be secured who would perform the customary services due from it, the bailiff was forced to commute them. "'So and so holds such land for rent, because no one would hold it for works,' is a fairly frequent entry both before and after 1349," on the records of the Bishopric of Winchester. The important point to be noticed here is that the money rent paid in these cases was always less than the value of the services which had formerly been exacted from the land; not only that, it was less than the money equivalent for which those services had sometimes been commuted, an amount far less than the market value of the services in the fourteenth century at the prevailing rates of wages. For instance, when Roger Haywood took up three virgates and a cotland at a money rent instead of for the traditional services, "_quia nullus tenere voluit_," he contracted to pay rents whose total sum amounted to less than twenty-five s.h.i.+llings and included the church scot for one virgate and the cotland. On this manor, Sutton, the total services of _one_ virgate valued at the rate at which they were ordinarily "sold" must have amounted to at least eighteen or twenty s.h.i.+llings. At Wargrave the services of thirty-two virgates were all commuted at three s.h.i.+llings each, and the same sum was paid by each of twenty-three virgates at Waltham.[70]

At Forncett and on the manors of the Berkeley estates commutation had little part in the disappearance of labor dues. The vacated land was leased in larger or smaller parcels at the best rents which could be obtained. This rent bore no relation to the value of the services formerly due from the land. The customary tenements which had been the units upon which labor dues were a.s.sessed were broken up, and the acres leased separately, or in new combinations, to other men.[71] At Forncett, as in the case of the Winchester manors where the services were commuted, the terms of the new arrangement can be compared with those of the old, and it is seen that the money rent obtained was less than the value of the services formerly due. The customary services were here valued at over two s.h.i.+llings per acre; the average rent obtained was less than one s.h.i.+lling an acre. The net pecuniary result of the change, then, was the same as though the services had been commuted for money at less than their value.

Another method of reducing rents in this period was the remission of a part of the services due. Miss Levett notes the extent to which this took place on the Winchester manors, and suggests that the Bishop wished to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiency of serf labor.[72]

She overlooks the fact that he failed to exact the money payment in place of the services for which manorial custom provided. It was a well established custom that in case work owed by the tenants was not used they should pay money instead. The amount of work needed each year on the demesne varied according to the size of the harvest, etc., but the number of days' works for which the tenants was liable was fixed. The surplus of works owed above those needed were "sold" each year to the villains. Frequently the number of works sold exceeded the number performed, although formal commutation of dues had not taken place. At Nailesbourne (1348-1349), 4755 works were due from the villains, but nearly 4000 of these were sold.[73] If the Bishop had merely wished to avoid waste, then, in ceasing to require the performance of villain services on his manors, he would have required the payment of the money equivalent of these services. When the services were excused, and the customary alternative of a money payment also, the change was clearly an intentional reduction in the burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of money as the distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of the changed relations between landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the payment. It makes little difference whether the services were commuted at a lower rate than that at which they had formerly been "sold" or whether the villain was simply held accountable for a smaller number of services at the old rate; in either case the rent was reduced, and the burden of the tenant was less.

The reduction of rent is thus the characteristic and fundamental feature of all of the changes of land tenure during this period. This fact is ignored by historians who suppose the chief factor in the commutation movement to have been the desire of prosperous villains to rid themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom. Vinogradoff, for instance, in his preface to the monograph from which most of the foregoing ill.u.s.trations have been drawn, has nothing at all to say of the reduction of rent and the poverty of the tenants when he is speaking of the various circ.u.mstances attending the introduction of money payments.

In the particular case under discussion the cultural policy of William of Wykeham may have suggested arrangements in commutation of labour services and rents in kind. In other cases similar results were connected with war expenditures and town life. In so far the initiative in selling services came from the cla.s.s of landowners. But there were powerful tendencies at work in the life of the peasants which made for the same result. The most comprehensive of these tendencies was connected, it seems to me, with the acc.u.mulation of capital in the hands of the villains under a system of customary dues. When rents and services became settled and lost their elasticity, roughly speaking, in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the surplus of profits from agriculture was bound to collect in the hands of those who received them directly from the soil, and it was natural for these first receivers to turn the proceeds primarily towards an improvement of their social condition; the redemption of irksome services was a conspicuous manifestation of this policy.[74]

This paragraph contains several suggestions which are shown to be misleading by a study of the extracts from the original sources embodied in the essay of whose preface it forms a part. It is true that the cultural policy of William of Wykeham was an extravagant one, and that he was in need of money when the system of tenure was being revolutionized on his estates; but it is misleading to interpret the changes which took place as measures for the prompt conversion into cash of the episcopal revenues. No radical changes in the system of payment were necessary in order to secure cash, for the system of selling surplus services to the villains had become established decades before the time of this bishop, and no formal commutation of services was necessary in order to convert the labor dues of the villains into payments in money. The bulk of the services were not performed, even before commutation, and the lord received money for the services not used on the demesne. The essential feature of the changes which took place was a reduction in the amount paid--a reduction which the bishop must have resisted so far as he dared, just as other landowners must have resisted the reductions which their tenants forced them to make at a time when they were in need of money.

The commutation of services was incidental, and was only a slight modification of the system formerly in use, but, whether services were commuted or were in part excused, the result was a lessening of the burden borne by the tenant, and the reduction of the rent received by the lord.

It is true, as Professor Vinogradoff states, that there were powerful tendencies in the life of the peasants which made for this result. In fact no initiative in selling services--at these rates--could have come from the side of the landowners. The change was forced upon them.

Unless they compromised with their tenants and reduced their rents they soon found vacant tenements on their hands which no one could be compelled to take. The amount of land which was finally leased at low rents because the former holders had died or run away and no one could be forced to take it at the old rents is evidence of the reluctance with which landowners accepted the situation and of their inability to resist the change in the end.

But it is not true that the most comprehensive of these tendencies was the acc.u.mulation of capital in the hands of the villains, and their desire to improve their social condition. The immediate affect of the commutation of services and similar changes at this time was to leave their social condition untouched, whatever the final result may have been. These villains did not buy themselves free of the marks of servitude. Their gradual emanc.i.p.ation came for other reasons. At Witney, for example, where the works of all the native tenants had been commuted by 1376, they were still required to perform duties of a servile character:

they were all to join in haymaking and in was.h.i.+ng and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and t.i.thingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were formerly wont to do.[75]

This example, taken at random, is typical of the continuance of conditions which should make the historian hesitate before adopting the view that the social condition of the peasants was improved by the new arrangements made as to the bulk of their services and rents. But more than that, the terms of the new arrangements are not those which would be offered by well-to-do cultivators in whose hands the profits from the soil had acc.u.mulated. In all of these cases the new terms were advantageous to the tenants, not to the lord, and advantageous in a strictly pecuniary way. The lord had to grant these terms because the tenants were in the most miserable poverty, and could no longer pay their accustomed rent.

Neither the Black Death, whose effects were evanescent, nor the desire of prosperous villains to free themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom was an important cause in the sequence of agrarian changes which took place in the fourteenth century. Serfdom as a status was hardly affected, but a thousand entries record the poverty and dest.i.tution which made it necessary to lighten the economic burdens of the serfs. At Brightwell, for example, the works of three half-virgaters were relaxed, the record reads, because of their poverty (1349-1350).[76] Some villains had no oxen, and were excused their plowing on this account, or were allowed to subst.i.tute manual labor for carting services.[77] At Weston, in 1370, a tenant "_non arat terram domini causa paupertate_."[78] At Downton, in 13766-1377, no money could be collected from the villains in place of the services they owed in haymaking.[79] Frequently when services were commuted for money, the record of the fact is accompanied by the statement that the change was made on account of the poverty of the tenants. At Witney, for instance, the

works and services of all the native tenants were commuted at fixed payments (_ad certos denarios_) by favour of the lord as long as the lord pleases, on account of the poverty of the homage.[80]

The reduction in rent in this case was at least a third of the total.

The value of the customary services commuted was at least ten s.h.i.+llings six pence per acre, and they were commuted at six s.h.i.+llings eight pence. Other explicit references to the poverty of the tenants as the cause of commutation are quoted by Page:

At Hinton, Berks, the Bailiff reports in 1377, that the former lord before his death had commuted the services of the villains for money, "eo quod customarii impotentes ad facienda dicta opera et pro eorum paupertate" ... At Stevenage, 1354, S. G. "tenuit unam vergatam reddendo inde per annum in serviciis et consuetudinibus xxii solidos. Et dictus S. G. pauper et impotens dictam virgatam tenere. Ideo concessum est per dominum quod S. G.

habeat et teneat predictam terram reddendo inde xiii solidos iv denarios pro omnibus serviciis et consuetudinibus."[81]

In connection with the matter of heriots, also, evidences of extreme poverty are frequent. Frequently when a tenant died there was no beast for the lord to seize.

The heriot of a virgate was generally an ox, or money payment of its value. But the amount as often reduced "propter paupertatem,"

and sometimes when a succeeding tenant could not pay, a half acre was deducted from the virgate and held by the lord instead of the heriot.[82]

The rate at which the value of these holdings declined when their tenants possessed too few cattle was rapid. Land without stock is worthless. The temptation to sell an ox in order to meet the rent was great, but when the deficiency was due to declining productivity of the soil, there was no probability that it would be made up the following year even with all the stock, and with fewer cattle the situation was hopeless. After this process had gone on for a few years nothing was left, not even a yoke of oxen for plowing. Whatever means had been taken to keep up the fertility of the land, attend to the drainage, _etc._, were of necessity neglected, and finally the hope of keeping up the struggle was abandoned. The spirit which prompted the reply of the Chatteris tenant when he was ordered by the manorial court to put his holding in repair can be understood: "_Non reparavit tenementum, et dicit quod non vult reparare sed potius dimittere et abire._"[83] If he left the manor and joined the other men who under the same circ.u.mstances were giving up their land and becoming fugitives, it was not with the hope of greatly improving his condition. Some of the fugitives found employment in the towns, but this was by no means certain, and the records frequently state that the absent villains had become beggars.[84]

The declining productivity of the soil not only affected the villains, but reduced the profits of demesne cultivation. It has already been seen that the acreage under crop was steadily decreasing, as more and more land reached a stage of barrenness in which it no longer repaid cultivation. This process is seen from another angle in the frequent complaints that the customary meals supplied by the lord to serfs working on the demesne cost more than the labor was worth. According to Miss Levett: